DaVinci Notes App Blog

By Jay Sardeshmukh      DaVinci  is synonymous with being an innovator. DaVinci was curious about everything! He wanted to make sure he recorded all his insights and observations - while they were still fresh in his mind. He famously wrote thousands of pages to keep a record of his ideas.  He wanted to keep  his notes private, (who doesn't?) so he made them difficult to read by using his own shorthand and a mirror script. And yet he knew someone would decipher them later.  His only plea to posterity was - "I hope they let  a mathematician read them". In addition to his codexes , he carried around small bound leather notebooks , tucked into his belt to capture inspiration and thoughts when he was away from his studio and home.   This practice of keeping notebooks to capture insights and observations - while they are still fresh is a practice that many famous people have adopted. This article by Brett & Kate McKay ...

Sketch : When you must have a picture or a sketch ! Sometimes words are not sufficient to capture what you are thinking about. You need a photo or a sketch to illustrate. While the sketch module is not a full fledged drawing program - it accomplishes 80% of what most people want in drawing.  Our goal was not to have a drawing program for professional graphic artists - but more to serve as a quick way to capture or illustrate a concept for managers, small business owners , students.  Like an advanced whiteboard. Despite  that disclaimer - you can draw pretty nice looking and useful drawings by using opacity, color and fill strokes. See some samples below: Album Images as Background Layer for Annotation Both the Journal and Notes Pages enable you to post album images or camera shots into a post.  Posting from the album - allows you to use saved images from any professional graphics app that saves images to the album. The sketch module howeve...

Task Board : Your ToDo Lists at a glance Everyone has things they have to do, items to follow up on. Checklists in general. The task board is designed to show you all your  todo lists at a glance. Usage is fairly simple and self explanatory. Here are a few new notes to help you : When you first create a list - it shows up in the new column. You then put the list - either in one of the following columns In-Process Priority Completed To neatly align the cards once you have dragged them around , you can hit the ALIGN button. To archive completed lists you can post them to the journal.  * * Note to see the POST TO JOURNAL button , the list has to be in the completed column. Editing Lists Tapping on a card will open it up for a detail view. The card can be opened in edit mode or view mode. Note: Using the check/uncheck only works in the view mode Adding /Editing/Deleting items works in the edit mode. You can color and...

Idea Maps: Brainstorming and Refining Your Ideas Idea Maps are essentially Mind Maps with a bit more flexibility for brainstorming and refining ideas. Unlike "pure" mind-mapping solutions - you do not need a strict hierarchy with a single root. We also allow a free-form draw operation. Here are some notes to help you use the Idea Map module in DaVinci Notes: When are Idea Maps  more useful than sketches or lists? Idea Maps are more useful than sketches or lists when you are brainstorming , planning content , trying to understand root causes for problems or trying to get a better understand the relationships of various elements underlying a concept or issue.  The main reason Idea Maps are better than lists or sketches is that they allow you to rearrange and reposition nodes  and connected links at will - to better see the whole picture. Rearranging is not always easy to do with a sketch or a whiteboard -as it often requires a lot erasing and rewrit...

Journal: The place for everything! The journal is your place to keep everything. As soon as an idea or thought  comes to mind , to record it in your journal , click the green + button on top and start typing. As your iphone is always handy, it is ideal for Journaling. I am sure DaVinci himself would have loved it. The Journal resides on your device and is therefore private to you. The journal is protected by Apple's device access security.  Your posts only leave your device if you choose to share. You can choose to share a post via email or sharing a screen shot Here are a few notes to help you: TOP NAV BAR - Search will fetch any posts where the Post heading contains the Search word - The Activity button will enable you to share the current journal screenshot EDIT BAR (use while composing or editing a post) - The edit options bar on top is scrollable. -  DtHdr : will put today's Date in the Panel Heading - Align : will open up indent/outdent...